A Shrubbery

A few days ago, I met a little boy who proudly told me that he was almost three years old. He’s at the “why?” stage of life. Why won’t the window open? Why is the air conditioning on? Why do we have to stay inside? Why? Why? Why?

The boy’s mother and I answered four or five iterations of “why?” but we eventually had to resort to desperate measures. We gave up and said “because.”

Most adults eventually lose patience with a child’s eternal “why?” Maybe we don’t have time in the moment to answer endless questions. Maybe we don’t know the answer.

“Why is the sky blue?” I vaguely recall something about the frequency of light interacting with the earth’s atmosphere, but I don’t understand it well enough to explain it to a three-year-old.

I suspect that we also lose patience with the question “why?” because we never got a good answer ourselves. Why are we here? Why do things happen the way they do?

That sentiment is reflected in today’s Gospel reading. A farmer scatters seed and then waits. Days go by. And the seed sprouts and grows, he doesn’t know how. “The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.”

We clever modern people know a lot more about how plants grow than Jesus’s listeners did. Elementary school students learn about photosynthesis. And if you really want to become an expert, you can get a Ph.D. in grain science just down the road.

Science tells us how. But all the science in the world can’t help much with that ultimate question of why. Why does life exist at all?

Once we exhaust our modern expertise, we find ourselves in the same place as the ancients: gazing in wonder and awe at God’s creation.

Today’s lessons are about things that grow – cedar trees and mustard seeds and crops in a field. Today’s lessons are about the mystery of creation, the mystery of nature. But even more, today’s lessons are about the nature of God’s kingdom.

First we heard the older image from the Prophet Ezekiel: the noble cedar tree that symbolizes God’s majesty and power, planted on the mountain height of Israel. “Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind.”

The greatest tree in the land is an obvious symbol for God’s power. It’s straightforward, easy to understand. In this country, we might use a redwood in the same way—as a sign of permanence and strength and shelter and power. God is like a redwood. God is like a cedar.

But then Jesus adds his own analogy, one that most of us probably wouldn’t come up with. The kingdom of God, he says, is like a mustard seed. A tiny seed that grows into …“the greatest of all shrubs.” Some preachers will go on and on about how amazing a mustard tree is, but as far as I can tell, that’s mostly wishful thinking

The greatest of all shrubs. It’s a bit like saying the most well-pedigreed of all mutts, or the swiftest of all donkeys, or the most gourmet bowl of oatmeal. There’s nothing wrong with mutts or donkeys or oatmeal, but “great” isn’t usually the first adjective that springs to mind to describe them.

Cedar trees can be great; shrubs, not so much. Also, mustard wasn’t a crop that any gardener would deliberately plant. It was basically a weed.

The mustard plants of Jesus’s time were a lot like the honeysuckle that’s currently infesting my backyard here in Manhattan: fast-growing, invasive, and, once-rooted, almost impossible to get rid of.

The kingdom of God is like invasive honeysuckle? Really?

Well, maybe it is.

Didn’t Jesus say that God’s kingdom was a place for the humble? That those who humble themselves would be exalted? Didn’t he model humility in his own life? A baby born to a working-class family, laid in a manger, raised in a distant corner of the Roman Empire. He was a bit like a mustard seed himself.

And so is the Church. We build great cathedrals. We sing soaring music. I love those things. But even if every cathedral crumbled to dust, the Church would go on. Because the Church is found wherever two or three gather in Jesus’s name. Wherever bread and wine are shared, the Body and Blood of Christ. Wherever the poor and suffering find care.

The Church is like the honeysuckle in my yard, deeply rooted, deceptively strong.

I take several lessons from today’s readings.

The kingdom of God is indeed like seed scattered in a field. We need to plant seeds, but we won’t always understand how and when and why they grow. We have a role to play, but so much is outside our control. And that’s ok.

The kingdom of God is indeed like a mustard seed, growing from humble origins, stubbornly rooted, resilient. And that too is how it should be.

And, finally, the hardest lesson of all: we may never find an answer to that final question “why?” Maybe that’s also how it ought to be.

Or perhaps the answer is this: The kingdom of God is a place where all that is is gift and grace.

Whether it’s a cedar tree in Lebanon or a honeysuckle bush in Kansas, a stalk of wheat, or a mustard seed. All that is is gift and grace.